The Brightener

"She is here, waiting for us!" exclaimed Miss Reardon. "Oh, surely you must see her – on the sofa, with her feet crossed – such pretty diamond buckles on her shoes! – and her lap full of roses. She holds up one rose, she kisses it, to you – Robert – Robert – some name that begins with L. I can't hear it clearly. But Robert is enough."

Yes, Robert was enough – more than enough!

Miss Reardon asked in an almost matter-of-fact way if he would like to sit down on the sofa beside June, who wished him to do so. He didn't answer; but he sat down, and his eyes stared at vacancy. I knew from their expression, however, that he saw nothing.

"What will be the next thing?" I wondered.

I had not long to wait to find out!

"She asks me to take your hand and hers. Then she will talk to you through me," Miss Reardon explained. As she spoke, she drew up a small chair in front of the sofa, leaned forward, took Robert's right hand in hers, and held out the left, as if grasping another hand – a hand unseen.

As the medium did this, with thin elbows resting on thin knees, she closed her eyes. A look of blankness came over her face like a mist. I can't describe it in any other way. Presently her chin dropped slightly. She seemed to sleep.

Neither Robert nor I had uttered a word since we entered the room. We waited tensely.

Just what I expected to happen I hardly know, for I had no experience of "manifestations" or séances. But what did happen surprised me so that I started, and just contrived to suppress a gasp.

A voice. It did not sound like Miss Reardon's voice, with its rather pleasant American accent. It was a creamy English voice, young and full-noted. "June!" I whispered under my breath, where I sat across the length of the room from the sofa. I glanced at Robert. There was surprise on his face, and some other emotion deep as his heart. But it was not joy.

"Dearest, have you forgotten me so soon?" the voice asked. "Speak to me! It's I, your June."

It was a wrench for Robert to speak, I know. There was the pull of self-consciousness in the opposite direction – distaste for conversation with the Invisible while alien eyes watched, alien ears listened. And then, to reply as if to June, was virtually to admit that he believed in her presence, that all doubt of the medium was erased from his mind. But after a second's pause he obeyed the command.

"No," he said, "I've not forgotten and I never can forget."

"Yet you are engaged to marry this Joyce Arnold!" mourned the voice that was like June's.

I almost jumped out of my chair at the sound of Joyce's name. It was another proof that the medium was genuine.

Robert's tone as he answered was more convinced than before I thought. And the youth had died out of his eyes. They looked old.

"Do you want me to live all my life alone, now that I've lost you, June?" he asked.

"Darling, you are not alone!" answered the voice. "I'm always with you. I love you so much that I've chosen to stay near you, and be earth bound, rather than lead my own life on the plane where I might be. I thought you would want me here. I thought that some day, if I tried long enough, you would feel my touch, you would see my face. After a while I hoped I was succeeding. I looked at you from the eyes of my portrait in your study. Now and then it seemed as if you knew. But then that girl interfered. Oh, Robert, in giving up my progression from plane to plane till you could join me, has the sacrifice been all in vain?"

The voice wrung my heart. It shook as with a gust of fears. Its pleading sent little stabs of ice through my veins. So what must Robert have felt?

"No, no! The sacrifice isn't in vain!" he cried. "I didn't know, I didn't understand that those on the other side came back to us, and cared for us in the same way they cared on earth. I am yours now and always, June, of course. Order my life as you will."

"Ah, my dear one, I thank you!" The voice rose high in happiness. "I felt you wouldn't fail me if I could only reach you, and at last my prayer is answered. Nothing can separate us now through eternity if you love me. You won't marry that girl?"

"Not if it is against your wish, June. It must be that you see things more clearly, where you are, than I can see them. If you tell me to break my word to Joyce Arnold, I must – I will do so."

"I tell you this, my dearest," said the voice. "If you do not break with her, you and I are lost to each other for ever. When I chose to be earth bound I staked everything on my belief in your love. Without it in full, I shall drift – drift, through the years, through ages, I know not how long, in expiation. Besides, I am not dead, I am more alive than I was in what you call life. You are my husband, beloved, as much as you ever were. Think what I suffer seeing another woman in your arms! My capacity for suffering is increased a thousandfold – as is my capacity for joy. If you make her your wife – "

"I will not!" Robert choked. "I promise you that. Never shall you suffer through me if I can help it."

"Darling!" breathed the voice. "My husband! How happy you make me. This is our true marriage– the marriage of spirits. Oh, do not let the barrier rise between us again. Put Joyce Arnold out of your heart as well as your life, and talk to me every day in future. Will you do that?"

"How can I to talk to you every day?" he asked.

"As we are talking now. Through a medium. This one will not always be near you. But there will be somebody. I've often tried to get word through to you. I never could, because you wouldn't believe. Now you believe, and we need not be parted again. You know the way to open the door. It is never shut. It stands ajar. Remember!"

"I will remember," Robert echoed. And his voice was sad as the sound of the sea on a lonely shore at night. There was no warm happiness for him in the opening of a door between two worlds. The loss of Joyce was more to him than the gain of this spirit-wife who claimed him from far off as all her own. It seemed to me that a released soul should have read the truth in his unveiled heart. But perhaps it did read – and did not care.

The voice was talking on.

"I am repaid for everything now," it said. "My sacrifice is no sacrifice. For to-day I must say good-bye. Power is leaving me. I have felt too much. I must rest, and regain vitality – for to-morrow. To-morrow, Robert, my Robert! By that time we can talk with no restraint, for you will have parted with Joyce Arnold. After to-day you will never see her again?"

"No. After to-day I will never see her again, voluntarily, as that is your wish."

"Good! What time to-morrow will you talk with me?"

"At any time you name."

"At this same hour, then, in this same room."

"So be it. If the medium consents."

"I shall make her consent. And you and I will agree upon someone else to bring us together, when she must go elsewhere, as I can see through her mind that she soon must. Good-bye, dearest husband, for twenty-four long hours. Yet it isn't really good-bye, for I am seldom far from you. Now that you know, you will feel me near. I – "

The voice seemed to fade. The last words were a faint whisper. The new sentence died as it began. The medium's eyelids quivered. Her flat breast rose and fell. The "influence" was gone!

CHAPTER V

THE BARGAIN

That night was one of the worst in my life. I was so fond of Robert Lorillard, and I'd grown to love Joyce Arnold so well that the breaking of their love idyll hurt as if it had been my own.

Never shall I forget the hour when we three talked together at my flat after that séance at the Savoy, or the look on those two faces as Robert and Joyce agreed to part! Even I had acquiesced at first in that decision – but only while I was still half stunned by the shock of the great surprise, and thrilled by the seeming miracle. At sight of the two I loved quietly giving each other up, making sacrifice of their hearts on a cold altar, I had a revulsion of feeling.

I jumped up, and broke out desperately.

"I don't believe it's true! Something tells me it isn't! Don't spoil your lives without making sure."

"How can we be surer than we are?" Robert asked. "You recognized June's voice."

"I thought then that I did," I amended. "I was excited. Now, I don't trust my own impression."

"But the perfume of La France roses? Even if the woman could have found out other things, how should she know about a small detail like June's favourite flower? How could she have the perfume already in her room when we came – as if she were sure of our coming there – which of course she couldn't have been," Robert argued.

"I don't see how she could have been sure," I had to grant him. "I don't see through any of it. But they're so deadly clever, these people – the fraudulent ones, I mean. They couldn't impress the public as they do if they weren't up to every trick. All I say is, wait. Don't decide irrevocably yet. The way the voice talked didn't seem to me a bit like June. Only the tones were like hers; and they might have been imitated by anybody who'd known her, or who'd been coached by someone."

"Dear Princess, you're so anxious for our happiness that I fear you're thinking of impossible things. Who could have an object in parting Joyce and me? I can think of no one. Still less could this stranger from America have a motive, even if she lied, and really knew who I was before she spoke to us at the Savoy."

"I admit it does sound just as impossible as you say!" I agreed, forlornly. "But things that sound impossible may be possible. And we must find out. In justice to Joyce and yourself – even in justice to June's spirit, which I can't think would be so selfish – we must find out!"

"What would you suggest?" Joyce asked rather timidly. But there was a faint colour in her cheeks, like a spark in the ashes of hope.

"Detectives!" I said. "Or rather a detective. I know a good man. He served me very well once, when some of our family treasures disappeared from Courtenaye Abbey, and it rather looked as if I'd stolen them myself. He can learn without any shadow of doubt when Miss Reardon did land, and when she came to London. Besides, he's sure to have colleagues on the other side who can give him all sorts of details about the woman: how she's thought of at home, whether she's ever been caught out as a cheat, and so on. Will you both consent to that? Because if you will, I'll 'phone to my man this moment."

They did consent. At least, Robert did, for Joyce left the decision entirely to him. She was so afraid, poor girl, of seeming determined to hold him at any price, that she would hardly speak. As for Robert, though he felt that I was justified in getting to the bottom of things, I saw that he believed in the truth of the message he'd received. If it were not the spirit of June who had come to command his allegiance, he still had a right to his warm earthly happiness with Joyce Arnold. But if it were indeed her spirit who claimed all he had to give for the rest of life, it was a fair debt, and he would pay in full.

I received the detective (my old friend Smith) alone, in another room, when he came. The necessary discussion would have been torture for Robert and intolerable for Joyce. When Smith left I had at least this encouragement to give the two: it would be simple to learn what I wished to learn about Miss Reardon, on both sides of the Atlantic.

That was better than nothing. But it didn't make the dark watches of the night less dark. I had an ugly presentiment that Smith, smart as he was, would get hold of little to help us, if anything. Yet at the same time I felt that there was something to get hold of – somewhere!

If I hadn't implored them to wait, Joyce and Robert would have decided to publish the news that their marriage (which somehow everyone knew about!) would "not take place." This concession they did make to me; but they agreed together that they mustn't meet. My cheerful flat felt like a large grave fitted with all modern conveniences, when it had been deprived of Robert. And Joyce trying to be normal and not to shed gloom over me, her employer, was too agonizing!

Robert didn't even write to Joyce. I suppose he couldn't trust himself. But he wrote to me, and gave the history of his second interview with Miss Reardon. June had come again, and had reminded him of incidents about which, he said, "no outsider could possibly know."

"I can't help believing now that there are more things in heaven and earth than I'd dreamed of in my philosophy," he ended his letter. "There's no getting round the fact that what I should have thought a miracle has happened. The spirit of June has claimed me from the 'other side.' And even if I were brutal enough, disloyal enough, to disown the claim, to pretend to Joyce and myself that I didn't believe, neither Joyce nor I could have a moment's happiness, married. She knows that as well as I do. As my wife her life would be spoiled. June would always stand between us, separating us one from the other. I think I should be driven mad. Joyce's heart would be broken!

"I've promised to talk with June through a medium every day. Miss Reardon has to leave London in a fortnight, but June's voice asked me to go to Opal Fawcett. You remember my telling you that Opal suggested this long ago, saying that June wanted to get in touch with me? I wouldn't hear of it then, because at that time I had no reason to believe in the genuineness of visits from one world to another. Now it's different. I shall go to Opal.

"Tell Joyce that I'll write her to-night. It won't be a letter such as I should wish to write. But she will understand."

Yes, she would understand! One could always trust Joyce to understand, even if she were on the rack!

It was the next day – the third day after the unforgettable one at the Savoy – when my tame detective brought his budget. He would have come even sooner, he said, if there hadn't been a delay in the cable service.

Miss Reardon, Smith learned, had never been exposed as an impostor. She was respected personally, and had attained a certain amount of fame both in Boston (where she lived) and New York. She had been several times invited to visit England, but had never been able to accept until now. She had arrived by the ship and at the time stated. When we met her at the Savoy, she could not have been more than two hours in London. Therefore her story seemed to be true in every detail, and what was more, she had not been met at ship or train by any one.

I simply hated poor dear little Smith. He ought to have nosed out something against the woman! What are detectives for?

"You've been an angel to fight for my happiness," Joyce said. "I adore you for it. And so does Robert, I know – though he mustn't put such feelings into words, or even have feelings if he can help it. There's nothing more to fight about now. The best thing I can pray for is that Robert may forget our – dream, and that he may be happy in this other dream – of June."

"And you?" I asked. "What prayer do you say for yourself? Do you pray to forget?"

"Oh, no!" she answered. "I don't want to forget. I wouldn't forget, if I could. You see, it wasn't a dream to me. It was – it always will be – the best thing in my life – the glory of my life. In my heart I shall live it all over and over again till I die. I don't mind suffering. I've seen so much pain in the war, and the courage that went with it. I shall have my roses – not La France; deep red roses they'll be, red as blood, and sharp with thorns, but sweet as heaven. There!" and her voice changed. "Now you know, Princess! We'll never speak of this again, because we don't need to, do we?"

"No – o," I agreed. "You're a grand girl, Joyce, worth two of – But never mind! And I'll try to make you as happy as I can."

She thanked me for that; she was always thanking me for something. Soon, however, she broke the news that she must go away. She loved me and her work, yet she couldn't stop in London; she just couldn't. Not as things were. If Robert had been turning his back on England she might have stayed. But his promise to communicate with June daily through Opal bound him to London. Joyce thought that she might try India. She had friends there in the Army and in the Civil Service. She might do useful work as a nurse among the purdah women and their babies, where mortality was very high, she'd heard. "I must be busy – busy every minute of the day," she cried, hiding her anguish with that smile of hers which I'd learned to love.

What Robert had said to her in his promised letter, the only one he wrote, she didn't tell. I knew no more than that it had been written and received. Probably it wasn't an ideal letter for a girl to wear over her heart, hidden under her dress. Robert would have felt it unfair to write that kind of letter. All the same I'm sure that Joyce did wear it there!

As for me, I was absolutely sick about everything. I felt as if my two dearest friends had been put in prison on a false charge, and as though – if I hadn't cotton wool for a brain – I ought to be able to get them out.

"There's a clue to the labyrinth if I could see it," I told myself so often that I was tired of the thought. And the most irritating part was that now and then I seemed to catch a half glimpse of the clue dangling back and forth like a thread of spider's web close to my eyes. But invariably it was gone before I'd really caught sight of it. And all the good that concentrating did was to bump my intelligence against the pale image of Opal Fawcett.

I didn't understand how Opal, even with the best – or worst – will in the world, could have stage-managed this drama, though I should have liked to think she had done it.

Miss Reardon frankly admitted having heard of Opal (who hadn't heard of her), among those interested in spiritism, during the last few years; but as the American woman had never before been in England, and Opal had never crossed to America, the Boston medium hardly needed to say that she'd never met Miss Fawcett. As for correspondence, if there were a secret between the pair, of course they'd both deny it. And so, though I longed to fling a challenge to Opal, I saw that it would be stupid to put the two women, if guilty, on their guard. Besides, how could they, through any correspondence, have contrived the things that had happened?

Suddenly, through the darkness of my doubts, shot a lightning flash: the thought of Jim Courtenaye.

Superficially judging, Sir James Courtenaye, wild man of the West, but lately transplanted, appeared the last person to assist in working out a psychic problem. All the same a great longing to prop myself against him (figuratively!) overwhelmed me; and for fear the impulse might pass, I wired at once:

Please come if you can. Wish to consult you.

Elizabeth Di Miramare.

Jim was, as usual, hovering between Courtenaye Coombe and Courtenaye Abbey. There were hours between us, even by telegraph, and the best I expected was an answer in the afternoon to my morning's message. But at six o'clock his name was announced, and he walked into the drawing room of my flat as large as life, or a size or two larger.

"Good gracious!" I gasped. "You've come?"

"You're not surprised, are you?" he retorted.

"Why, yes," I said. "I didn't suppose – "

"Then you're not so brainy as I thought you were," said he. "Also you didn't look at time-tables. What awful catastrophe has happened to you, Elizabeth, to make you want to see me?"

I couldn't help laughing, although I didn't feel in the least like laughter; and besides, he had no right to call me Elizabeth.

"Nothing has happened to me," I explained. "It's to somebody else – "

"Oh, somebody you've been trying to 'brighten,' I suppose?"

"Yes, and failed," I confessed.

He scowled.

"A man?"

"A man and his girl." Whereupon I emptied the whole story into the bowl of Jim's intelligence.

"Do you see light?" I asked at last.

"No," he returned, stolidly. "I don't."

Oh, how disappointed I was! I'd hardly known how much I'd counted on Jim till I got that answer.

"But I might find some," he added, when he'd watched the effect of his words on me.

"How?" I implored.

"There's only one way, if any, to get the kind of light you want," said Jim. "It might be a difficult way, and it might be a long one."

"Yet you think light could be got? The kind of light I want?" I clasped my hands and deliberately tried to look irresistible.

"Who can tell? The one thing certain is, that trying would take all my time away from everything else, maybe for weeks, maybe for months."

His tone made my face feel the way faces look in those awful concave mirrors: about three feet in length and three inches in width.

"Then you won't undertake the task?" I quavered.

"I don't say that," grudged Jim.

"You wouldn't say it if you could meet Joyce Arnold," I coaxed. "She's such a darling girl. Poor child, she's out now, pulling strings for a job in India."

"Meeting her wouldn't make any difference to me," said Jim. "It's for you I'd try to bring off this stunt – if I tried at all."

"Oh, then do it for me," I broke out.

"That's what I was working up to," he replied. "I wouldn't say 'yes' and I wouldn't say 'no' till I knew what you'd do for me in return if I succeeded."

"Why, I'd thank you a thousand times!" I cried. "I'd – I'd never forget you as long as I live."

"There's not much in that for me. I hate being thanked for things. And what good would it do me to be remembered by you at a distance, perhaps married to some beast or other?"

"But if I marry I sha'n't marry a beast," I sweetly assured my forty-fourth cousin four times removed.

"I should think any man you married a beast, if he wasn't me," said Jim.

"Good heavens!" I breathed. "Surely you don't want to marry me!"

"Surely I do," he retorted. "And what's more, you know it jolly well."

"I don't."

"You do. You've known it ever since that affair of the yacht. If you hadn't, you wouldn't have asked me to hide the Scarlett kid. I knew then that you knew. And you'd be a fool if you hadn't known – which you're not."

I said no more, because – I was found out! I had known. Only, I hadn't let myself think about it much – until lately perhaps. But now and then I had thought. I'd thought quite a good deal.

When he had me silenced, Jim went on:

"Just like a woman! You're willing to let me sacrifice all my engagements and inclinations to start off on a wild-goose chase for you, while you give nothing in return – "

"But I would!" I cut in.

"What would you give?"

"What do you want?"

"Yourself, of course."

"Oh!"

"If you'll marry me in case I find out that someone's been playing a devil's trick on Lorillard," said Jim, "I'll do – my damnedest! How's that?"

I shrugged my shoulders, and looked debonair; which was easy, as my nose is that shape. Yet my heart pounded.

"You seem to think the sacrifice of your engagements and inclinations worth a big price!"

"I know it's a big price," he granted. "But every man has his price. That happens to be mine. You may not have to pay, however, even in the event of my success. Because, in the course of my operations I may do something that'll land me in quod. In that case, you're free. I wouldn't mate you with a gaol bird."

I stared, and gasped.

"What do you mean?"

"Don't you know me intimately enough to be sure that once I'm on the warpath I stop at nothing?" he challenged.

"I don't think you'd be easy to stop," I said. "That's why I've called on you to help me. But really, I can't understand what there is in the thing to send you to prison."

"You don't need to understand," snorted Jim. "I sha'n't get there if I can keep out, because that would be the way to lose my prize. But I suppose from your point of view the great thing is for your two dearest friends to be happy ever after."

"Not at a terrible cost to you," I just stopped myself from saying. Instead, I hedged: "You frighten me!" I cried. "And you make me curious —fearfully curious. What can you be meaning to do?"